1. Technical Field of the Invention
This invention relates generally to computing devices and more particularly to components of such computing devices.
2. Description of Related Art
Communication systems are known to support wireless and wire lined communications between wireless and/or wire lined communication devices. Such communication systems range from national and/or international cellular telephone systems to the Internet to point-to-point in-home wireless or wired networks. The wireless and/or wire lined communication devices may be personal computers, laptop computers, personal digital assistants (PDA), cellular telephones, personal digital video players, personal digital audio players, global positioning system (GPS) receivers, video game consoles, entertainment devices, etc.
Many of the communication devices include a similar basic architecture: that being a processing core, memory, and peripheral devices. The memory stores operating instructions that the processing core uses to generate data, which may also be stored in the memory. The peripheral devices allow a user of the communication device to direct the processing core as to which programs and hence which operating instructions to execute, to enter data, etc. and to see the resulting data. For example, a cellular telephone includes a keypad, a display, a microphone and a speaker for such functions.
The processing core may include one or more digital signal processors (DSP), one or more microprocessors, and/or one or more programmable logic devices (e.g., field programmable gate arrays [FPGA], complex programmable logic device [CPLD], field programmable analog arrays [FPAA], etc.). The basic architecture of a DSP and of a microprocessor is known to include an instruction cache, a data cache, and an execution unit (e.g., a multiply-accumulator for a DSP and an arithmetic unit for a microprocessor). The basic architecture of a programmable logic device is also known to include a plurality of configurable logic blocks (CLB), a plurality of input/output blocks (IOB), and a plurality of switching modules that are programmable to couple one or more of the CLBs together and/or couple one or more CLBs to one or more IOBs. While programmable logic devices are programmable to execute a wide variety of algorithms, the CLBs, IOBs and switching modules are fixed and hard wired.
As integrated circuit technology advances, the basic architecture of a programmable logic device is increasing in complexity, capabilities, and size reduction. However, communication within programmable logic device is done using traces (e.g., on an IC and/or on a PCB), which requires drivers to drive the lines. As is known, the transferring of data via the traces and drivers consumes a significant amount of power, which produces heat. With many programmable logic devices architectures, heat dissipation is a critical issue. In addition, the numerous traces within the programmable logic device to support the switching function of the switching modules exhibits various transmission line and/or line propagation issues, which limits size reduction, frequency of operation, and/or performance.
Therefore, a need exists for a configurable programmable logic device that reduces power consumption and provides flexibility in implementation.